Social media plays a vital role in inbound marketing and is an important channel to spread your marketing message across your audience. Inbound marketing/content marketing focuses on attracting customers through good content and engagement. The main aim is to convince your customer that you offer more value than your competitors.
Social Media is a very effective tool for small as well as prominent marketers to reach their audience. But you might fail to serve the purpose of social media marketing if you do not plan properly.
P.O.S.T. method:
A social media plan should highlight how you will communicate your message and engage your audience in meaningful conversations. The POST method (People, Objective, Strategy, Technology/Tactics) was introduced by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book ‘Groundswell”. It is one of the practical and simplest social media plans to create and follow.
P – People: Who is your target audience for social media content?
Its always useful to create a fictional representation of your audience that characterizes your audience based on gender, age, demographics, income, etc. It is important to understand your audience, or no one would respond(like share, comment) on your posts. A way to solve this is by answering the question: What’s in it for them?
O – Objectives: What are you trying to achieve?
Clear objectives will help you determine your result. For example: To build your brand awareness amongst the audience. In this case, success would be seeing a bump in your website traffic where you share your expertise weekly.
S – Strategy:
A strategy is not just a plan. Instead, it is a plan that will help you meet your objective based on your knowledge about the target audience. You have to consider its value exchange. What are you offering them in exchange for their time and attention? You should always keep your customer as the centre of all your actions. For example: Write a piece of content that solves their problem in a better way.
T – Tactics:
Once you clearly understand your objective, people, and strategy, it’s time for you to select the tools and tactics that you would need for your campaign. For example: Once you decide the social media platform you would use, Learn everything you can about it (the culture, tone, factors that make it unique, etc.).
Social media is one of the many tools to aid your marketing. But the key to it is Patience. The results on social media would take time to reflect, but you have to consistent and steady. Think of it as a marathon and not a sprint. Always watch your metrics, listen to the conversations, and adjust your strategies accordingly.
